III The Empress Dowager -- As a Ruler

That a Manchu woman who had had such narrow opportunities of obtaining a knowledge of things as they really are, in distinction from the tissue of shams which constitute the warp and the woof of an Oriental Palace, should have been able to hold her own in every situation, and never be crushed by the opposing forces about her, is a phenomenon in itself only to be explained by due recognition of the influence of individual qualities in a ruler even in the semi-absolutism of China.

-- Arthur H. Smith in "China in Convulsion."

In considering the policy pursued by the Empress-mother after
her accession to the regency, one cannot but feel that she was
fully aware of the fact that she had been the wife of an emperor,
and was the mother of the heir, of a decaying house. Of the 218
years that her dynasty had been in power, 120 had been occupied by
the reigns of two emperors, and only seven monarchs had sat upon
the throne, a smaller number than ever ruled during the same period
in all Chinese history. These two Emperors, Kang Hsi and Chien
Lung, the second and fourth, had each reigned for sixty years, the
most brilliant period of the "Great Pure Dynasty," unless we except
the last six years of the Empress Dowager's regency. The other
ninety-eight years saw five rulers rise and pass away, each one
becoming weaker than his predecessor both in character and in
physique, until with the death of her son, Tung Chih, the dynasty
was left without a direct heir.

The decay of the imperial house, the encroachments of the
foreigner, and the opposition of the native Chinese to the rule of
the Manchus, awoke the Empress Dowager to a realization of the fact
that a stronger hand than that of her husband must be at the helm
if the dynasty of her people were to be preserved. "It may be said
with emphasis," says Colonel Denby, who was for thirteen years
minister to China, "that the Empress Dowager has been the first of
her race to apprehend the problem of the relation of China to the
outer world, and to make use of this relation to strengthen her
dynasty and to promote material progress." She was fortunate in
having Prince Kung associated with her in the regency, a man tall,
handsome and dignified, and the greatest statesman that has come
from the royal house since the time of Chien Lung.

Here appears one of the chief characteristics of the Empress
Dowager as a ruler -- her ability to choose the greatest statesmen,
the wisest advisers, the safest leaders, and the best guides, from
the great mass of Chinese officials, whether progressive or
conservative. Prince Kung was for forty years the leading figure of
the Chinese capital outside of the Forbidden City. He appeared
first, at the age of twenty-six, as a member of the commission that
tried the minister who failed to make good his promise to induce
Lord Elgin and his men-of-war to withdraw from Tientsin in 1858.
The following year he was made a member of the Colonial Board that
controlled the affairs of the "outer Barbarians," and a year later
was left in Peking, when the court fled, to arrange a treaty of
peace with the victorious British and French after they had taken
the capital. "In these trying circumstances," says Professor Giles,
"the tact and resource of Prince Kung won the admiration of his
opponents," and when the Foreign Office was formed in 1861, it
began with the Prince as its first president, a position which he
continued to hold for many years.

It was he, as we have seen, who succeeded in outwitting and
overthrowing the self-constituted regency on the death of his
brother Hsien Feng, and, with the Empress Dowager, seated her
infant son upon the throne, with the two Empresses and himself as
joint regents. This condition continued for some years, with the
senior Empress exercising no authority, and Prince Kung continually
growing in power. The arrangement seemed satisfactory to all but
one -- the Empress-mother. To her it appeared as though he were fast
becoming the government, and she and the Empress were as rapidly
receding into the background, while in reality the design had been
to make him "joint regent" with them. In all the receptions of the
officials by the court, Prince Kung alone could see them face to
face, while the ladies were compelled to remain behind a screen,
listening to the deliberations but without taking any part therein,
other than by such suggestions as they might make.

Being the visible head of the government, and the only avenue to
positions of preferment, he would naturally be flattered by the
Chinese officials. This led him to assume an air of importance
which consciously or unconsciously he carried into the presence of
their Majesties, and one morning he awoke to find himself stripped
of all his rank and power, and confined and guarded a prisoner in
his palace, by a joint decree from the two Empresses accusing him
of "lack of respect for their Majesties." The deposed Prince at
once begged their forgiveness, whereupon all his honours were
restored with their accompanying dignities, but none of his former
power as joint regent, and thus the first obstacle to her
reestablishment of the dynasty was eliminated by the
Empress-mother. To show Prince Kung, however, that they bore him no
ill will, the Empresses adopted his daughter as their own, raising
her to the rank of an imperial princess, and though the Prince has
long since passed away his daughter still lives, and next to the
Empress Dowager has been the leading figure in court circles during
the past ten years' association with the foreigners.

During her son's minority, after the dismissal of Prince Kung as
joint regent, the Empress-mother year by year took a more active
part in the affairs of state, while the Empress as gradually sank
into the background. She was far-sighted. Having but one son, and
knowing the uncertainty of life, she originated a plan to secure
the succession to her family. To this end she arranged for the
marriage of her younger sister to her husband's younger brother
commonly known as the Seventh Prince, in the hope that from this
union there might come a son who would be a worthy occupant of the
dragon throne in case her own son died without issue. She felt that
the country needed a great central figure capable of inspiring
confidence and banishing uncertainty, a strong, well-balanced,
broad-minded, self-abnegating chief executive, and she proposed to
furnish one. Whether she would succeed or not must be left to the
future to reveal, but the one great task set by destiny for her to
accomplish was to prepare the mind of a worthy successor to meet
openly and intelligently the problems which had been too vast, too
new and too complicated for her predecessors, if not for herself,
to solve.

When her son was seventeen years old he was married to Alute, a
young Manchu lady of one of the best families in Peking and was
nominally given the reins of power, though as a matter of fact the
supreme control of affairs was still in the hands of his more
powerful mother. The ministers of the European countries, England,
France, Germany, Russia and the United States, now resident at
Peking, thought this a good time for bringing up the matter of an
audience with the new ruler, and after a long discussion with
Prince Kung and the Empress-mother, the matter was arranged without
the ceremony of prostration which all previous rulers had
demanded.

The married life of this young couple was a short one. Three
years after their wedding ceremonies the young monarch contracted
smallpox and died without issue, and was followed shortly
afterwards by his young wife who heeded literally the instruction
of one of their female teachers in her duty to her husband to

Share his joy as well as sorrow, riches, poverty or guilt, And
in death be buried with him, as in life you shared his guilt.

That her nearest relatives did not believe, as has often been
suggested, that there was any "foul play" in regard to her death,
is evident from the fact that her father continued to hold office
until the time of the Boxer uprising, at which time he followed the
fleeing court as far as Paotingfu, where having heard that the
capital was in the hands of the hated foreigners, he sent word back
to his family that he would neither eat the foreigners' bread nor
drink their water, but would prefer to die by his own hand. When
his family received this message they commanded their servants to
dig a great pit in their own court in which they all lay and
ordered the coolies to bury them. This they at first refused to do,
but they were finally prevailed upon, and thus perished all the
male members of her father's household except one child that was
rescued and carried away by a faithful nurse.

When Tung Chih died there was a formidable party in the palace
opposed to the two dowagers, anxious to oust them and their party
and place upon the throne a dissolute son of Prince Kung. But it
would require a master mind from the outside to learn of the death
of her son and select and proclaim a successor quicker than the
Empress Dowager herself could do so from the inside. She first sent
a secret messenger to Li Hung-chang whom she had appointed viceroy
of the metropolitan province at Tientsin eighty miles away,
informing him of the illness of her son and urging him to come to
Peking with his troops post-haste and be ready to prevent any
disturbance in case of his death and the announcement of a
successor.

When Li Hung-chang received her orders, he began at once to put
them into execution. Taking with him four thousand of his most
reliable Anhui men, all well-armed horse, foot and artillery, he
made a secret forced march to Peking. The distance of eighty miles
was covered in thirty-six hours and he planned to arrive at
midnight. Exactly on the hour Li and his picked guard were
admitted, and in dead silence they marched into the Forbidden City.
Every man had in his mouth a wooden bit to prevent talking, while
the metal trappings of the horses were muffled to deaden all sound.
When they arrived at the forbidden precincts, the Manchu Bannermen
on guard at the various city gates were replaced by Li's Anhui
braves, and as the Empress Dowager had sent eunuchs to point out
the palace troops which were doubtful or that had openly declared
for the conspirators, these were at once disarmed, bound and sent
to prison. The artillery were ordered to guard the gates of the
Forbidden City, the cavalry to patrol the grounds, and the
foot-soldiers to pick up any stray conspirators that could be
found. A strong detachment was stationed so as to surround the
Empress Dowager and the child whom she had selected as a successor
to her son, and when the morning sun rose bright and clear over the
Forbidden City the surprise of the conspirators who had slept the
night away was complete. Of the disaffected that remained, some
were put in prison and others sent into perpetual exile to the
Amoor beyond their native borders, and when the Empress Dowager
announced the death of her son, she proclaimed the son of her
sister, Kuang Hsu, as his successor, with herself and the Empress
as regents during his minority. When everything was settled, Li
folded his tent like the Arab, and stole away as silently as he had
come.

The wisdom and greatness of the Empress Dowager were thus
manifested in binding to the throne the greatest men not only in
the capital but in the provinces. Li Hung-chang had won his title
to greatness during the Tai-ping rebellion, for his part in the
final extinction of which he was ennobled as an Earl. From this
time onward she placed him in the highest positions of honour and
power within sufficient proximity to the capital to have his
services within easy reach. For twenty-four years he was kept as
viceroy of the metropolitan province of Chihli, with the largest
and best drilled army at his command that China had ever had, and
yet during all this time he realized that he was watched with the
eyes of an eagle lest he manifest any signs of rebellion, while his
nephew was kept in the capital as a hostage for his good conduct.
Once and again when he had reached the zenith of his power, or had
been feted by foreign potentates enough to turn the head of a
bronze Buddha, his yellow jacket and peacock feather were kindly
but firmly removed to remind him that there was a power in Peking
on whom he was dependent.

Li Hung-chang's greatness made him many enemies. Those whom he
defeated, those whom he would not or could not help, those whom he
punished or put out of office, and those whose enmity was the
result of jealousy. When the war with Japan closed and the Chinese
government sent Chang Yin-huan to negotiate a treaty of peace, the
Japanese refused to accept him, nor were they willing to take up
the matter until "Li Hung-chang was appointed envoy, chiefly
because of his great influence over the government, and the respect
in which he was held by the people." We all know how he went, how
he was shot in the face by a Japanese fanatic, the ball lodging
under the left eye, where it remained a memento which he carried to
the grave. We all know how he recovered from the wound, and how
because of his sufferings he was able to negotiate a better treaty
than he could otherwise have done. Then he returned home, and only
"the friendship of the Empress and his own personal sufferings
saved his life," says Colonel Denby, for "the new treaty was
urgently denounced in China" by carping critics who would not have
been recognized as envoys by their Japanese enemies.

In 1896 he was appointed to attend the coronation of the Czar at
Moscow, and thence continued his trip around the world. Never
before nor since has a Chinese statesman or even a prince been
feted as he was in every country through which he passed. When he
was about to start, at his request I had a round fan painted for
him, with a map of the Eastern hemisphere on one side and the
Western on the other, on which all the steamship lines and
railroads over which he was to travel were clearly marked, with all
the ports and cities at which he expected to stop. He was
photographed with Gladstone, and hailed as the "Bismarck of the
East," but when he returned to Peking, for no reason but jealousy,
"he was treated as an extinct volcano." The Empress Dowager invited
him to the Summer Palace where he was shown about the place by the
eunuchs, treated to tea and pipes, and led into pavilions where
only Her Majesty was allowed to enter, and then denounced to the
Board of Punishments who were against him to a man. And now this
Grand Secretary whom kings and courts had honoured, whom emperors
and presidents had feted, and our own government had spent thirty
thousand dollars in entertaining, was once more stripped of his
yellow jacket and peacock feather, and fined the half of a year's
salary as a member of the Foreign Office, which was the amusing sum
of forty-five taels or about thirty-five dollars gold, and it was
said in Peking at the time that only the intercession of the
Empress Dowager saved him from imprisonment or further
disgrace.

During the whole regency of the Empress Dowager only two men
have occupied the position of President of the Grand
Council -- Prince Kung and Prince Ching. While the former was
degraded many times and had his honours all taken from him, the
latter "has kept himself on top of a rolling log for thirty years"
without losing any of the honours which were originally conferred
upon him. The same is true of Chang Chih-tung, Liu Kun-yi and Wang
Wen-shao, three great viceroys and Grand Secretaries whom the
Empress Dowager has never allowed to be without an important
office, but whom she has never degraded. Need we ask the reason
why? The answer is not far to seek. They were the most eminent
progressive officials she had in her empire, but none of them were
great enough to be a menace to her dynasty, and hence need not be
reminded that there was a power above them which by a stroke of her
pen could transfer them from stars in the official firmament to
dandelions in the grass. Not so with Yuan Shih-kai -- but we will
speak of him in another chapter.

All the great officials thus far mentioned have belonged to the
progressive rather than the conservative party, all of them the
favourites of the Empress Dowager, placed in positions of influence
and kept in office by her, all of them working for progress and
reform, and yet she has been constantly spoken of by European
writers as a reactionary. Nothing could be farther from the truth,
as we shall see. Nevertheless she kept some of the great
conservative officials in office either as viceroys or Grand
Secretaries that she might be able to hear both sides of all
important questions.

One of these conservatives was Jung Lu, the father-in-law of the
present Regent. When she placed Yuan Shih-kai in charge of the army
of north China, she also appointed Jung Lu as Governor-General of
the metropolitan province of Chihli. One was a progressive, the
other a conservative. Neither could make any important move without
the knowledge and consent of the other. Whether the Empress Dowager
foresaw the danger that was likely to arise, we do not know, but
she provided against it. We refer to the occasion when in 1898 the
Emperor ordered Yuan Shih-kai to bring his troops to Peking, guard
the Empress Dowager a prisoner in the Summer Palace, and protect
him in his efforts at reform. The story belongs in another chapter,
but we refer to it here to show how the Empress Dowager played one
official against another, and one party against another, to prevent
any such calamity or surprise. It would have been impossible for
Yuan Shih-kai to have taken his troops to Peking for any purpose
without first informing his superior officer Jung Lu unless he put
him to death, much less to have gone on such a mission as that of
imprisoning as important a personage as the Empress Dowager, to
whom they were both indebted for their office.

Another instance of the way in which the Empress Dowager played
one party against another was the appointment of Prince Tuan as a
member of the Foreign Office. After his son had been selected as
the heir-apparent it seemed to the Empress Dowager that for his own
education and development he should be made to come in contact with
the foreigners. Most of the foreigners considered the appointment
objectionable on account of the "Prince's anti- foreign tendencies.
But to my mind," says Sir Robert Hart, "it was a good one; the
Empress Dowager had probably said to the Prince, 'You and your
party pull one way, Prince Ching and his another -- what am I to do
between you? You, however, are the father of the future Emperor,
and have your son's interests to take care of; you are also head of
the Boxers and chief of the Peking Field Force, and ought therefore
to know what can and what cannot be done. I therefore appoint you
to the yamen; do what you consider most expedient, and take care
that the throne of your ancestors descends untarnished to your son,
and their empire undiminished! yours is the power, -- yours the
responsibility -- and yours the chief interests!' I can imagine the
Empress Dowager taking this line with the Prince, and, inasmuch as
various ministers who had been very anti-foreign before entering
the yamen had turned round and behaved very sensibly afterwards, I
felt sure that responsibility and actual personal dealings with
foreigners would be a good experience and a useful education for
this Prince, and that he would eventually be one of the sturdiest
supporters of progress and good relations."